#emac6300

Alas, it's time for the final class-related post on Jonathan Zittrain's The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It (Yale, 2008).

Right off the bat, the title on the book's cover stunned me like a cold, unexpected slap from nowhere. Rather, it was specifically the subtitle that caught my eye: ... And How to Stop It. I thought to myself, this guy must be out of his mind. Who on earth would want to get rid of the Internet? You can't go back. That's crazy!

Alas, I only needed to peer between the covers to get at Zittrain's point. The history of the rise of the Internet has taken place through two different modalities of computing machine - the appliance (Hollerith and subsequently IBM's tabulating and word processing machines) and the PC/personal computer (Jobs' Apple II and Windows-based machines). Appliances exemplify closed-system computing. They serve preset functions very limited in scope, are safe and secure, and allow little or no flexibility to their users (and manufacturers for that matter) with regard to changing or adding to their functionality. By contrast, the personal computer could be symbolized by an open book whose story waits to be finished or even written by its users. It exemplifies open, generative computing. PCs possess few preset functions by their manufacturers and are open to the addition of new, often yet-to-be discovered functions by their users. This openness to tinkering by its users both blesses and curses the PC, for it endows it with its generative capacity and its large vulnerability (in comparison to appliances) to breeches in security. Without this generative capacity, Zittrain contends, the Internet would not have developed into the wondrous socio-econo-technological phenomenon it is today.

Yet, at the same time, it is this crucial feature of generative capacity that lies under an enormous threat. The flexibility and freedom to create enabled by the generative capacity of a technology also leaves it wide open to corruption and abuse. According to Zittrain, it will take only a 9/11-like watershed security breech (unlikely but possible) or a "death of a thousand cuts" (the "creeper scenario," much more likely) to lock down our PCs (and the Internet) and turn them into sterile, unimaginative, highly restricted appliances and humanity will effectively enter the next socio-technological Dark Age (p. 51). Hence, there we find the reason for the book's alarmist subtitle. It is this wholly plausible fate - the lockdown of the Internet - against which Zittrain inveighs.

Speaking of inveighing against things (enter my not-so-subtle segue into an entirely new point that doesn't bore you with summarizing any more of the book), I have a confession to make about one of the model technologies Zittrain highlights as an example of successful generative technology: yes, that's right, Wikipedia. Librarians and info professionals, as the story normally goes, have historically been quick to inveigh against Wikipedia, because it represents a shortcut in good research and critical thinking, or so they/we would say. After reading chapter 6, "The Lessons of Wikipedia," I have to say that I have been convinced that this opinion no longer holds an "absolute truth," much less is it entirely correct. Sure, I agree that Wikipedia should not be one's sole source of information, especially with regard to projects that require serious, thorough research (e.g., academic papers). I would say the same for the use of any encyclopedia, for that matter. It can serve as an excellent starting point, a place to help brainstorm ideas on a topic (i.e., discovery tool), a source for background information on nearly any topic. However, as I always strive to impress upon all the student researchers I encounter, it should not turn into one's one-stop, all-in-one destination for research. You have to expand your horizons beyond what is found there. That's what the references are for!

That being said, Zittrain has opened my eyes to the reason Wikipedia encompasses more than just an online encyclopedia. Despite its many ups and downs (but mainly, they have been ups), Wikipedia stands head and shoulders above the competition, because it embodies the essence of generative technology:

Wikipedia's success ... is attributable to a messy combination of constantly updated technical tools and social conventions that elicit and reflect personal commitments from a critical mass of editors to engage in argument and debate about topics they care about. Together these tools and conventions facilitate a notion of "netizenship": belonging to an Internet project that includes other people, rather than relating to the Internet as a deterministic information location and transmission tool or as a cash-and-carry service offered by a separate vendor responsible for its content. (Zittrain, p. 142)

In this passage, Zittrain conceptualizes Wikipedia using the language of Lawrence Lessig, namely the "four constraints" of regulation in Ch. 7, "What Things Regulate," of Code v. 2.0. They are:

These four constraints are better understood in tandem, interdependent parts of a dynamic system of regulation imposed on the "dot" (in this case, generative technology or Wikipedia). Changes in one often affect changes in one or more other constraints. Therefore, as Lessig argues in Code 2.0, a complete view takes into account all four modalities together (p. 123). Regarding each constraint in isolation generates an incomplete and potentially misleading picture. Thus, for example, architecture applies to hardware of the Internet and servers that are used to host Wikipedia as well as the software that allows its contributors to generate entries. This architecture is in turn shaped by Wikipedian's norms or set of community-generated rules - which among other things require that anyone with access to the Web can become  a Wikipedia contributor, an enormous openness to public involvement (FotI, p. 146) - and laws - which Wikipedia honors and upholds, such as laws on copyright and defamation.

Lawrence Lessig on how regulation, or code, will provide architecture to protect our fundamental values on the Internet - freedom of speech, the right to privacy, and intellectual property rights. Initially perceived as an anarchic Wild West immune to regulation by the state, cyberspace, especially today, is anything but. Initially, non-commercial interests possessed control of this architecture, but it has since moved into the exceedingly powerful grasp of commercial entities (p. 7). Now, as Lessig sees it, government must (and will, as I am confident time will tell) step in regulate as a counterbalance to commercial interests. The questions remain: what checks and balances will be put in place to ensure that no single regulatory entity amasses too much power? Can free culture still thrive, free speech still be preserved, and access still be granted while maintaining a reasonable expectation of privacy?

Clearly, The Exploit's (2007) Galloway and Thacker and Information Feudalism's (2003) Drahos and Braithwaite read Lessig's Code before writing their respective books. The first version of Code came out in 1999, plenty early to allow all those authors time to assimilate Lessig's thoughts and then reply to his book, so to speak, with updates on the state of the code and reports on whether the values he holds dear have been upheld or further imperiled. While D&B illustrated stark examples of how the government has lavishly dispensed IP protections to commercial entities at the detriment of the public good, developing a system that all but rigs copyright and patent benefits entirely in companies' favor, G&T adhere to the paradigm of the code, or protocols, that function across numerous boundaries (e.g., biological, technological, political) and advocate turning those protocols against themselves (exploits) as a means to uphold and exercise individuals' freedom.

I would have to say that in all my years working at the campus library, Ch. 10  "intellectual property" accutely resonated with me. When Lessig recounts Stefik's notion of trusted systems as a method that employs a manipulation of structure (technology) to assure authorized access to copyright materials, I had to struggle to keep the bile from rising in my throat. As the library, licenses with hundreds of vendors to online materials (primarily e-books, e-journals, video and audio, and databases) demand that we provide access only to authorized users, the university community (staff, faculty and students, and not the public). Implementation of this "trusted system" is costly and frustrating, both for the library and our constituents. Nothing is easy about accessing the library's electronic resources from off campus (although from my past experience with a different system, it has been worse). Problems arise in a number of scenarios, all more or less due to the trusted system: users fail to get what is their right to access to materials because of issues that can be rectified right on the spot (e.g., browser incompatibility issues or media plug-ins that need to be loaded), or that persist for days (e.g., the "system" does not recognize him/her as a real student; this necessitates visits to numerous offices on campus, all during business hours in most cases, and all at the student's expense of wasted time). 

In short, the trusted systems at place in, well, virtually every university and college library demonstrate how the actions in the name of protecting property - intellectual property, no less (which, as Lessig argues, does not deprive the owner of value when shared, not like a house or car does [p.181]) - can be excessive and prohibitive to those who have every right as authorized users to access it. The "promot[ion] ... of science and the useful arts" suffers as a result of IP rights that extend for far too long in my humble opinion. I am aware of Fair Use, the Free Software movement, and Creative Commons as quasi-antidotes to excessive IP protections and the shrinking size and growing exclusivity of trusted systems. However, little has been done to reign in the annually increasing cost of access to these protected materials (we spend millions each year) for a return on investment, if I may use an economics term here, that it appears to dwarf in comparison.

Warning: This week's post (which is really a late response last week's reading) will be semi-off-the-cuff. I took the day off of work and school on Monday. Yet, I cannot refrain from making some comment, however nominal or superficial, because Information Feudalism has me riled and mad.

As an info-professional and librarian, I have never been so aware of the legal, economic and, hell, human rights issues with regard to copyright and patent laws as Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite have made abundantly clear in Information Feudalism: Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?

Knowledge is power, and power is knowledge is about the simplest, starkest way to summarize the overall theme of this book. Other important subthemes that riff on the main theme are

"Piracy" makes you and me criminals in our own country, and in many cases without knowing it.

Excessive IP protection quashes innovation by making it too costly for competitors and peers to improve on existing inventions. Loose or non-existent IP protections also hinder investment in R&D, since it makes such investments unprofitable or unable to recoup costs and break even.

TRIPS (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) might as well be called TRAPS. Generally speaking, it overly favors the entities enforcing its rules and severely handicaps those net importers of TRIPS-shielded commodities who agree to it. It's a shining example of how the rule-writers completely rig the copyright and patent game to benefit themselves either through extortionist profits or ridiculous penalties against those who violate the rules.

I'll put it another way. Did you work on a life-saving drug at your public university medical school? Better keep it under wraps, patent that sucker before it's gets out, oh, and make sure to charge the public and arm and a leg for it. Why should the public not spend a little (read: A LOT) more for that miracle drug at the pharmacy? They paid your salary with your tax dollars after all. I mean, that university biochemist who is benefiting from his colleagues' intellectual capital and all that expensive research at the library (I know better than anyone how free those journals and books are not), not to mention the extended network of university and professional colleagues around the globe from which his position entitles him, is not doing anything illegal from closing off widespread benefit from his work without exacting a massive profit first - all thanks to copyright and patent protections. (Oh, and he probably will not profit personally from it, but the company that files his patent, manufactures and markets the drug, sure will.) After all, just because it is legal does not mean its ethical or moral.

Such is and has been the case with much university research and intellectual output (I repeat, we pay a lot at the library for those journal subscriptions, many of which contain journals from our own professors. Yes, it is a racket of paying twice for the same information. Thanks for pissing me off, Drahos and Braithwaite. The academic publishing model is an unsustainable one for increasingly strained library budgets. This is an argument that the professional library journals have been making for years, but very few libraries have been able or willing to combat. But I digress), the chemical/drug industries (starting in Germany, then spreading to the US), modern technology (from the late 19th C. onward. I must say that Edison was a real %&*# when it came to copyrighting and/or patenting anything that he touched or thought about), and now computer and web applications. According to D & B, the "system" has been rigged in favor of empowering and enriching the oligarchs and technocrats, all under the auspices of protecting the work's author or inventor, when it is seldom he/she who gets the lion's share of the benefits (i.e., profits from sales).

It’s a Small Post After All / It’s a Small, Small Post

This week’s post will be (perhaps mercifully) short as I concentrate my efforts on piecing together my paper proposal.

The sense that I get from Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody is that he regards the rise of social networking, crowdsourcing, Web 2.0, collective action, etc. with a sober ambivalence compared to the ecstatic cheers of Christakis and Fowler. C & F can barely contain their enthusiasm for what they see as the coming techno-utopi-singularity in Connected. Shirky manages a more measured stance on the concepts of networked communities and crowdsourcing. At least he appears more willing to acknowledge that the relatively recent phenomenon of collective action via Web 2.0 technologies can lead to good as well as bad outcomes.

Of course, his book would strike us as depressing as hell if all it documented were the disasters and failures. Shirky is kind enough to dwell on many of the good stories, often speculating on where such collective actions could lead. As he points out in Ch. 11 (“Promise, Tool, Bargain”) after recounting numerous examples of social networking in various cultural milieu – before one can pass a “good” or “bad” judgment on their effects - it helps to understand exactly how they form. It takes a Heideggerian perfect storm - the building of a critical mass - amongst technology (that is easy and accessible), the group (not too small, not too big, and guided by some form of shared mission), and willpower (compelled by a give and take relationship in which the individuals of the group feel significant for the efforts they do while not feeling too put upon by the demands of participation). In this light, it is easy to see how these organizations that seemingly materialize from thin air constitute a delicate ecosystem, one in which the slightest imbalance usually spells the group’s collapse. With this understanding, I imagine that countless social networking groups have come and gone like flashes in a pan, so quickly forgotten as society rushes forward to the next big thing.

Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker’s The Exploit: A Theory of Networks

Galloway and Thacker deviate dramatically from Christakis and Fowler’s take on networks last week. While C and F more or less trumpeted the network paradigm and networks with virtually uncritical hyper-enthusiasm (they in fact welcome wholeheartedly the coming of the next stage in evolution, the techno-human superorganism), G and T paint a sobering, more level-headed portrait of the network paradigm. While acknowledging the ascent of networks as the dominant paradigm in the current discourse (p. 25) on technology, politics, biology/medicine and the mixing or hybridization amongst each other (e.g., biotechnology from the networking of biology with technology), G and T make no secret their deeply critical view that networks are anything but frameworks for ultimate good that invariably engender a form of liberation for mankind.

Instead, they take this misguided view to task as they summon (seemingly without any effort) the intellectual acumen of several of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers, some explicitly (Deleuze, Foucault, and Guattari, amongst a long list of lesser known scientists and theorists) and some implicitly (Habermas, one can argue, with respect to the public’s participation in politics or the public sphere). When we start to view networks more fully (their ontological, technological and political dimensions – p. 58), we see that they emerge not only as entities that are dynamic, flexible, moving (in flux, a process), and in some sense living, they embody a paradox, a set of contradictions in tension, in every one of those dimensions in which they are found: that is, they display the characteristics of unity and heterogeneity at the same time (p. 60). Most importantly, regardless of the dimension that the network occupies (but explained via the politico-ontological), it represents highly efficient distributed control as exercised through its most fundamental mechanism, protocols, the means to discriminate and regulate all those disparate, heterogeneous nodes – in essence, protocols dictate how their relationships will function - and bring them under the single unifying umbrella of the network.

While in some circles networks have come to symbolize an inspiring new form of liberation through the power of widespread connectivity and interconnectivity, G and T illustrate that the network properties of connectivity translate precisely into the opposite effect: that is, by dint of their being networks (existing), networks come to symbolize the latest in forms of control (p. 5). Explained another way, networks are all about determinism, not the free will of its agents (nodes), which it exercises through the complex, multifaceted concept of protocols, be they human (e.g., political, social) nonhuman (material, biological, technological), or both (Ibid). In addition, our understanding of networks must not exclude the revelation that networks create conditions for the rapid and efficient distribution of power in order for the sovereign (as an entity distinct from the network) to establish and maintain its hegemonic influence (p. 20).

Before we as the little people envision ourselves as powerless pawns before the multitude of networks and resign ourselves to lives of quiet, bitter despondency, G and T summon their inner Marx in order to throw us a surprise and a possible way out of this situation. At the end of the “Nodes” section, Part I, the authors set forth their manifesto to “combat” (for lack of a better term) the disenfranchisement and disempowerment caused by the network paradigm. It is here that we witness the revitalization of the Habermassian public sphere, a way to regain that which is rightfully ours, an influence on the political dimension, a re-appropriation of the dominant techno-political organization aka the protocols in our lives (p. 78). The idea is not to level the network until it is gone. A networkless world no longer exists. To put it succinctly, “it takes networks to fight networks” (p.100). Instead, we have to engage in what singer, musician and agent provocateur Jello Biafra calls “creative crimes,” or what G and T call the exploit. What form the exploit takes varies – from life-resistance to counterprotological practices; using the essential characteristics of networks to critique, subvert, and transform them – the point being that public spheres are not doomed to extinction, as Boeder opined in his essay.

Connected – Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler

[Apologies on “getting it wrong” in my interpretation of Habermas from last week. I continually regarded the public sphere in a limited sense as a social group, giving very little weight to or ignoring the significance of its ability to affect the political. Therefore, I was wrong to state in so many words, “Where isn’t there a public sphere?” Like Boeder says in the opening of his essay, “… one might argue that it [the public sphere] is on the verge of extinction.” After last week’s discussion, I now understand how one might justifiably come to such a conclusion.]

While I’m still a few dozens of pages short of completing Connected, I feel I’d better voice my thoughts now before I miss the deadline. Based on my nearly complete reading of the text, I would argue that Connected does not share with the world a entirely new or radical revelation, intriguing as it may be. The idea of viewing all social activity – be it in the form of business transactions, sexual behavior, fashion trends, Internet “viral” phenomena, etc. – through the paradigm of networks seems little more than the next logical step in the study of the psychology and the philosophy of social groups and culture. Since the approaches of methodological individualism and methodological holism alone have not yielded sufficient insight, as Christakis and Fowler claim, why not combine the two disciplines into a new yet not wholly different paradigm, network theory (302-303)? Essentially, Christakis and Fowler give social and cultural phenomena the Freakonomics treatment, that is, they construct a new, different way of interpreting the mundane so that it transforms into the novel, the wondrous, the more revealing. For that, they deserve NYT’s bestseller status and then some. These two doctors may have not invented new sensory organs, but they certainly have given us a new way to sense with our existing organs for a more expanded, deeper, and more information-rich experience.

Putting aside the authors’ nearly relentless extoling of the value of the network paradigm as demonstrated in anecdote after anecdote, the reader will acknowledge that this new epistemology for understanding humanity’s place in the world stands on relatively firm ground. Yet as much as I appreciate their zealous network optimism, I could not avoid pondering some of the more sinister manifestations of the network. I am talking about the idea of the superorganism or the singularity (great article on Ray Kurzweil, the Singularity Movement, and his predictions for a post-human future). While Connected briefly sheds light on the negatives that networks can expose and propagate (e.g., the spread of STDs among sexually active teens, the amassing of political power by a country’s plutocracy at the expense of the poor, or the spread of terrorism), the authors quickly brush aside such infrequent but nevertheless significant phenomena as they refocus their sights on all the good that network studies (and by extension networks) can bring to light. For me, the book’s most important message is that there is no individual human being who is completely and utterly independent. After all, advanced medical experiments notwithstanding, it takes at least two human beings to provide the materials to produce another; and no person that I know has ever been born from thin air. More importantly, no one - not the rich and the powerful, not the celebrity or the genius-level inventor – achieves his/her high station in life entirely on his/her own, isolated, and at the exclusion of other people or outside forces. Great personal success never occurs in a social vacuum, absent of a community and the fruits of collective effort, a message that I, like the book, firmly endorse. I wholeheartedly agree with the authors that the ideology of “rugged individualism” to which so many in American culture cling is both excessively overused and a myth.

As much as I find the book’s message clear and on point, I cannot escape consideration of another highly plausible “logical conclusion” of networks, the concept of the Singularity – a massive, self-conscious organism in which humans will effectively lose their distinct individuality and wander through life as identity-less cell-units (think the Bork from Star Trek, hive mind/insect colonies, or a world brain). Unless the human race wipes itself out through war, famine, or disease or a global natural disaster spells our end as species, is the next (final?) step in the evolution of humanity the merging of man and technology into the most epic network of them all, the singularity?

In raising this issue, I realize that I am not merely some paranoid kook opening the darker recesses of his brain to air a completely ridiculous, laughably farfetched figment of his imagination. Intellectual figures from a wide spectrum of disciplines have spoken on this topic more eloquently and convincingly than I. At the forefront of my mind, simply because his writing gets under your skin, is scifi writer Greg Bear. He entertains a version of the coming of the singularity in his novel and a short story that share the same title, Blood Music. In BM, an extraordinarily intelligent but arrogant scientist (in SF, aren’t they always?) sets off a chain of events resulting in global scale singularity by injecting himself with bio-nanobots (what he calls “noocytes” and are best described as grey goo) he devises in a lab after much trial and error. At first, the ‘bots gift him with superhuman qualities: incredible strength, heightened senses, immunity to disease. In a nightmarish turn of events, the ‘bots assimilate his genetic material, become self-aware in the process, begin replicating themselves non-stop, and eventually transform the scientist into a giant supercolony of noocytes. As the scientist surrenders his consciousness to this new techno-organism composed of millions of billions of nanobots, the story ends with the implication that thanks to the flushing of his ‘bot-riddled excretions into the community water supply earlier in the process, it is but a short matter of time before the rest of humanity falls to the same fate.

The authors of Connected give the impression that ultimately, they would welcome the singularity-izing of humanity:

“[C]ooperative interactions are hallmarks of most major evolutionary leaps that have occurred since the origin of life … the agglomeration of single-celled organisms into multicellular organisms, and the assembly of individuals into superorganisms.”

“Social networks can manifest a kind of intelligence that augments or complements individual intelligence … [They] can capture and contain information that is transmitted across people and time … and can perform computations that aggregate millions of decisions …”

“Social networks also have a memory of their own structure … and their own function …”

(p. 290)

“[U]nlike corporeal organisms, networks can, if disassembled, reassemble themselves at a distance.”

“Networks are also self-replicating in the sense that they outlast their members …”

“[They] are often self-annealing. They can close up around their gaps, in the same way that the edges of a wound come together.”

(p. 291)

You can see that they have made my point for me, in their own words. If the singularity is truly a foregone conclusion, does this mean I should embrace the rapture, resist it in futility, dread its coming, or all of the above?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thoughts and reactions to three essays on the public sphere:

·         The Public Sphere, Jürgen Habermas (1964)

·         Cyberdemocracy: The Internet and the Public Sphere, Mark Poster (1997)

·         Habermas’ heritage: The future of the public sphere in the network society, Pieter Boeder (2005)

Public Sphere (PS) “… a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed.”

It is a place where “…individuals assemble to form a public body … in an unrestricted fashion …. [free] to express and publish their opinions” as they see fit.

~ Habermas, p. 49

On the face of it, the concept of the public sphere seems an inevitability of human social behavior: a place, be it a physical or virtual/digital location, where individuals congregate freely to formulate and voice their opinions and concerns without fear of retaliation from outside powers (governmental, corporate, religious). True, the PS has seen a shift from traditional locales to cyberspace - the masses don’t seem to gather at coffeehouses, town squares, and churches as frequently as they used to.  Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the PS has seen an adoption of cyberspace in addition to all the venues it traditionally occupied. After all, PSes are like water: they will go wherever they can, be it in the street, the town hall, or online. As Boeder states in his essay, the PS truly posits itself as an abstraction more than as a physical/geographic gathering of persons. Cyberspace / the Internet / the WWW provides one more medium in which it may dwell, one that has altered the nature of the PS in both positive and negative ways: “… [T]he public sphere has always been virtual: Its meaning lies in abstraction” (“Conclusion”).

However, to leave the definition here is to give the idea of PS short shrift. For Habermas, the PS serves as more than just a sounding board for venting discontent or half-baked thoughts. It is “… a sphere which mediates between the society and state, in which the public organizes itself as the bearer or [sic. of?] public opinion . . . “ (p. 50). The emphasis here lies in public opinion, which “. . . can by definition only come into existence when a reasoning public is presupposed” (Ibid). Habermas’s critics and detractors have spilled plenty of ink on the shortcomings and biases (economic class, racial, gender) that arise from this Enlightenment-bound presupposition of reason in public opinion, so I will not go back down that well-trodden path. The assumption here is that the PS as a mode of reasoning public opinion seeks to rebalance the roles of power between society (the public) on the one hand and the state (the political) and large organizations (corporations) on the other.

My concern, which functions as a prevailing theme in the numerous emerging media studies outlined by Boeder, is with the question of whether the PS can thrive - can preserve, fortify, and expand the public’s power in relation to existing power structures (most of which have been shown to operate in contradiction to the public’s wants and needs) - in the continuously changing milieu of the Internet.  No doubt this is an open-ended question that demands to be posed today in 2011 as it was in 1997 (Poster) and 2005 (Boeder) and will need to be in the future if the notions of democracy, open public discourse, and the PS are to survive.

Photo of mass uprising in Tahrir Square, Egypt, Feb. 2011

Toward the end of his essay, Poster warns that “… the mere fact of communicating under the conditions of the new technology does not cancel the marks of power relations constituted under the conditions of face-to-face, print and electronic broadcasting modes of intercourse” (p. 268). The continued presence of the panoptic effect, for example, be it government-sponsored eavesdropping on citizens e-mails or commercial interests harvesting personal data on individuals’ buying habits, certainly reinforces this point. Only a government that empowers its citizens through transparent and open reporting of its machinations, permitting those gazed upon to look back on the gazer, can hope to counteract the public’s loss of power. Unfortunately in this country, we have witnessed a growing, seemingly insurmountable challenge to this right (a most necessary right if we dwell in a true democracy) as traditional media fail to live up to their role as the fourth estate as seen in saga of the Wikileaks controversy. But until the government or corporate gatekeepers gain the ability to throw the switch on Internet access – a scenario that at this point seems highly implausible due to the enormous economic and political hardship that action would cause (see Egypt, whose own government could keep the switch to publicly accessible Internet thrown off only for so long before the pain to it was too much to bear) – the public sphere possesses the means to counter such threats through the new powers granted by this digital medium (example, mirror sites and similar acts of civil disobedience when the government of Sweden [??] tried to shut down Wikileaks).

For sure, I do not suggest that every institution in existence strives against the interests of the PS. Certain think tanks, non-profit organizations and democratic government entities (think libraries here) hold the ambitions and desires of many PSes as their modus operandi. However, those institutions number in the few, and the amount of countervailing force they wield ebbs and flows beneath the whims of the economo-political climate in which they dwell.

I gather from this week’s readings, Michel Foucault’s detailed analysis of panopticism and Karl Marx’s critique of German idealism, that the theme both share centers on community and collective power/power over the collective. While it is somewhat interesting to look at the bone Marx picks with Hegel and the systematic dismantling of idealist/ideological philosophy (for which is substituted a remarkable, new way to chronicle the events of the world – historical materialism), what really resonated with me were Foucault’s thoughts on power, knowledge, discipline, society, and institution as embodied in the panopticon.

“…[The situation of the plague] called for multiple separations, individualizing distributions, an organization in depth of surveillance and control, an intensification and a ramification of power” (p. 3)

How could such a dire situation be properly dealt with in a desperately short period of time with limited political resources? As we read further along, we see the plague in a 17th-C. town was dealt with through a draconian quarantine from which it requires but a small leap to the panopticon – a hierarchical pyramid of discipline. The theory of the panopticon, first elucidated (and extoled) by that frightful man, Jeremy Bentham, arose as a means of exerting control over large groups of people with the utmost efficiency. While Bentham regarded it with respect to prison systems, Foucault is able to see panopticism fleshed out in virtually every modern institution, from schools to hospitals, mental health institutions (asylums) to places of work. He sums up the concept as follows:

“It is a type of location of bodies in space, of distribution of individuals in relation to one another, of hierarchical organization, of disposition of centers and channels of power, of definitions of the instruments and modes of intervention of power …

… [I]t makes it possible to perfect the exercise of power. It does this in several ways: because it can reduce the number of those who exercise it, while increasing the number of those on whom it is exercised. . . . [I]t gives ‘power of mind over mind.’” (p. 9)

When I read these words, how could I not be shaken to the core with fear and anxiety? Foucault brings to life every horrific thought and paranoid (non-)delusion of Big Brother I have suffered to varying degrees all throughout my life, but most pronouncedly as an adolescent (my Brave New World, 1984, and Brave New World Revisited years were profound ones, to say the least).

I have great difficulty seeing past the thought of the panoptic shema used for anything less than sinister purposes. All of the observed have their trust, their sanity turned against themselves, as each is lead to believe that he is under the watchful eye of some central authority (or can be watched at any time). Of course, only one administrator or overseer is needed, and only hints of his presence are required. Give away too much, and the observed can work around his paranoia by knowing when to expect the observer. Hence, power and discipline are exercised through subtlety and implication:

“[I]in order to be exercised, this power had to be given the instrument of permanent, exhaustive, omnipresent surveillance, capable of making all visible, as long as it could itself remain invisible. It had to be like a faceless gaze [emphasis mine]…” (p. 14)

The threat of supervision rather than supervision itself is enough to put the community of isolated individuals back in line.  

And here we see the ingenuity of the panoptic mechanism that thwarts the Marxist call to collective action to overthrow of the system. The community, as it were, consists of individuals who, rather than be subjugated through violence and overt oppression (the old way), are effectively isolated from one another (literally so in the prison system, figuratively so in the school situation) and subjugated by a subtle, insidious threats (be they reprimands, withdrawal of privileges, etc.). Foucault calls this the inversion of disciplines (p. 12). Individuals within the community of the panoptic schema have little or no interaction with each other, which makes the impossibility of a collective uprising (against oppressive forces, “the man”) a foregone conclusion. Moreover (and more demoralizing to consider) is the fact that the individuals, rather than be beaten down in the old system, are harnessed for their utility, there are played up for their “positive role”; in effect, they are parts in the machine, resources for exploitation, objects.

I realize that Foucault does not give an entirely negative account of panopticonism. First, he explains how it was a necessary and inevitable development concurrent with (industrial) capitalism (as means of production generate more wealth, more human beings are born, and the call for a better means of organizing [controlling] arises) [p. 19, first para.]. Second, he allows that in certain panoptic schema (the shool or the hospital, for instance), observation of the observer takes place, which allegedly guards against an abuse of power by the observer of the observed. Of course, this second part provides little comfort when speaking of more enclosed scenarios, such as government and governed, prison guards and prisoners – any situation in which the observer shields himself from transparency and openness.